A popular method of cooking many food items is to fry or deep fry them. A brief list of foods that may be deep fried include french fries, potato chips, chicken, pork, beef, candy bars, ice cream, etc. Many other types of food are amenable to deep frying. Deep frying generally involves immersing the food item in a high-temperature, fat-based solution, such as cooking oil (e.g., canola oil, peanut oil, vegetable oil, olive oil, liquefied shortening etc.) until the food is cooked. These and other foods may be cooked in other cooking liquids. For example, water may be used to steam, blanch, and boil certain foods
While fried foods have a certain appeal due to the particular taste and texture imparted to foods that are deep fried, such fried foods have some undesirable characteristics. For example, immersing foods in cooking oil results in additional fat being introduced into the food, and this fat is not generally beneficial to the person consuming the food. Furthermore, conventional deep frying methods generally do not attempt to remove this added fat. The added fat that is consumed with fried foods raises health concerns because a high level of fat in one's diet is generally not recommended for good health and nutrition. High quantities of saturated and trans fats such as those found in fried foods have been linked to adverse medical conditions. When cooking other foods in a liquid, such as cooking pasta in water, it may also be desirable to remove excess cooking liquid from the cooked food prior to serving or consuming the cooked food.
Thus, some attempts have been made to remove fat from fried foods or other cooking liquids from cooked foods prior to serving the foods. These attempts, however, require some intervening process between the time the food is removed from the high-temperature oil and the time when the food is served to a consumer. The longer the time between removal from the oil and service to the consumer, the cooler the fried food becomes. As the fried food cools, the freshness and desirability of the fried food decreases at least in part to the change in texture of the fried food because of oil absorption. For example, when french fries begin to cool after being removed from the cooking oil, the outside of the french fries cools more rapidly than the inside. This difference in cooling rates between the outside and inside results in the oil soaking in and collecting in the center of the french fries, which results in soggy french fries containing excess oil. Studies of fried foods have shown that as much as eighty percent of the oil absorbed by the fried food is absorbed during this cooling process.
The prior art has attempted to introduce various means of removing oil from newly fried foods. However, there continues to be a need for removing oil from fried foods in a device that is suitable for commercial and/or home use, for example, using a drawer.